13/03/2021
Techkriti, the annual technical and entrepreneurial festival of IIT Kanpur kicked off with an
amazing start to its 27th edition today. The inauguration of Techkriti'21 was witnessed by the
chief guest for the evening Shri Abhishek Singh, CEO-Digital India, the Dean of students' affairs
IIT Kanpur, professor Siddhartha Panda and the chairman
This year, the theme "Realm of Virtuality" has posed the idea of how virtual reality has helped us
come closer and how the virtual kingdom has started to thrive. The Director, IIT Kanpur,
Professor Abhay Karandikar addressed the students and all other participants with a warm hug.
He stressed the fact that Techkriti’21 is connected from Virtuality to reality in the times of reality
to virtuality. He also expressed his opinions that Techkriti is a platform of learning opportunities
with the flavor of entertainment like music and comedy.
The Dean of Students’ Affairs, Professor Siddhartha Panda took the opportunity to motivate
students for the innovation and talent showcase with their creativity and ideas. He also gave
examples of startup incubations, research abilities and flexibilities, National level missions that
are laid out by our institute. He also reflected the efforts of Techkriti to make experts from all
over the world share their experiences and thoughts for motivation on one platform.
Abhishek Singh, CEO-Digital India threw some light on the fact of growing career possibilities
adding to which he said how India is taking the lead in the field of startups. Likewise, Covid
innovation challenges made us develop Aarogyasetu which involved contributions of people
from various backgrounds which just accelerated the pace of innovation. His idea of what we
just need is an acceptable idea to all the people, which can be translated to a product, truly
sparked innovation ideas. He was delighted to share that young minds are designing solutions
which is the first step for innovation connecting and working together all over the world. He also
listed out some technical innovation which has been proved to be successful as the use of UPI
for digital payment, Digi locker, etc.
He also said, “Possibilities are immense”. He said the coming future is for startups based on
Artificial Intelligence which will demand high AI skills.
The festival kicked off with a very enlightening talk by Padma Bhushan Awardee, Shri Bikash
Sinha talk where he talked about how “ Today’s Science is tomorrow’s Technology “.
He started with the fact that technology is produced out of necessity and most of the time it is
dominated by science then he emphasized the importance of Fundamental Science and
encouraged young minds to not underestimate its importance. He urged all youths to
understand the broad essence of science.
Placing his idea about the magic of wondering. He said that the most important thing is
not to cram but to wonder at. How the sun, the moon, and the whole galaxy is a realm
full of wonders. He Inspired by saying that Man cannot be happy for doing this research
and all only for himself and must contribute something to the nation-building and have
some use to the others. Encouraged young minds to say to themselves, “I will discover
something.” Said, “We are so little but claim so big.” At last, stressed that today’s
students lack interest and dreams. He emphasized that students must not give away.
Try hard but never give away to circumstances; Good Luck!
With an enthusiastic audience and knowledge-seeking students, there were many questions
asked during the talk by a bunch of enthusiastic students to be answered with great words by
Bikash Sinha.
Immediately following this was the comedy night starting at 8:00 pm which was filled with
rib-tickling jokes. Performing artists Nishant Suri, followed by Vipul Goyal, and to conclude day 1
of Techkriti'21 was none other than Kanan Gill.
Alongside these, a total of 3 workshops on Startup and entrepreneurship, Robotics, and the
programming language Python, were carried out which too had participants in large numbers,
students who saw the opportunity and grabbed it to learn amazing skills. Competitions were
another component of day 1 which included DBatch, Mandakini, and Speed Quant.
Nishant Suri was the winner of season 1 of a famous Amazon prime stand-up comedy show
Comicstaan. And has since been one of the best comics in the stand-up circuit.
Vipul Goyal is one of the top Indian comics not to mention that he is an alumnus of IIT Bombay.
His performance in the web series Humorously yours has earned him a new fan base,
entertaining the audience tonight.
Kanan Gill, the software engineer turned artist made us roll with his Youtube series 'Pretentious
Movie Reviews', whom we have watched on 'Sketchy Behavior' and 'Keep it Real', the judge
and the mentor of the very much loved and famous Stand-up Reality Show, Comicstaan.
No comedy show is ever complete without audience interaction and today was no exception, the
audience going nuts over the jokes reflected a great response, let alone the comics were
making sure nobody gets a second to stop laughing.
Day 1, overall saw great two-way feedback, the enthusiasm in the Audience to listen and in the
spokesperson to deliver were extraordinary. We concluded day 1 of Techkriti'21 with an
overwhelming response and are looking forward to an exhilarating start for Day2
